# Five Leagues From the Borderlands *Created:* 2026-10-09, *Modified:* 2026-10-09 ![[Five Leagues From the Borderlands (cover).jpg]] Every fantasy warband starts on the wrong side of the map, and Ivan Sorensen's is no exception. **Five Leagues From the Borderlands** is the fantasy sibling to **[[Five Parsecs From Home]]** — the same solo-and-co-op "adventure wargaming" engine, re-skinned from starship scum to a band of hard-worn adventurers fighting to win a country back one skirmish at a time. Where its sci-fi cousin is about keeping a ship flying, this one is about keeping a borderland from being swallowed whole. You run a warband, you march it at the darkness, and you roll to find out which of you comes back. ## Setting The borderlands are a fantasy frontier in the worst sense of the phrase: a region of beleaguered settlements and ancient ruins, slowly being eaten by the sinister forces pressing in from beyond the map. Fey corruption and sorcery bleed through the old woods; cults, monsters, and the walking dead want the land, and the thin line of towns and fortified homesteads wants it not to give. There's no safe hearth here — the campaign is about carving out a foothold against a darkness that is methodical about its advances. The game hands you a country that fills itself in as you play: a personal map that gains locations as your warband explores, each one a potential site for a skirmish, a delve, a hunt, or a grim discovery. You're not saving the world in one battle; you're slowly, bloodily making the map your own while the enemy makes gains of its own on a schedule you don't fully control. ## Mechanics The engine will feel familiar to anyone who has creased a Five Parsecs rulebook: procedurally generated campaigns, skirmish miniatures battles, and a whole lot of trusting the tables. The skin is pure fantasy. **Your warband** is built from **Heroes** (the stars, complete with ambitions and skills) and **Followers** (the rank-and-file you fill the ranks with), plus the odd **Mystic** for magic and a rotating cast of **Friends** and **Enemies** generated as the campaign rolls on. Characters have ability scores and skills, and you'll make **Proficiency Tests** when the outcome is in doubt. Magic runs on **Strands** and **Will Points**, a spell engine that's deliberately more "grim sorcery with a price" than "fireball dispenser." The campaign runs in a rhythm of phases. There's a **town phase**, where you rest, repair, recruit, and talk to the locals; an **adventuring phase**, where you travel the map, explore locations, and get dragged into battles; and a **resolution phase**, where the ledger comes due — who was injured, who gained experience, what the enemy did while you were elsewhere. **Story Points** keep a hand on the wheel when the tables turn sour, and moral and will checks decide when a warband that's had enough cuts and runs. Battles play out as figure-agnostic skirmishes — typically a dozen or so figures, using whatever fantasy miniatures you happen to own — and the whole thing is written from the ground up for solo play, though co-op works too. The tone, per one of the blurbs, is "your heroes can survive this gritty fantasy world" — emphasis, as ever, on *can*. ## Editions - **First Edition** (2021) — the original self-published release of the fantasy sister game. Not held. - **Second Edition** (2022) — a revised step toward the Modiphius treatment. Not held. - **Third Edition** (2023) — the current Modiphius edition: the full rules, underground delves, a quest system, multiple player species, and the refined campaign loop in one handsome hardback. *In the library.* ## References - [Five Leagues From the Borderlands — Modiphius](https://modiphius.net/en-us/pages/five-leagues-from-the-borderlands) - [Five Parsecs From Home (the sibling family) — Modiphius (US)](https://modiphius.us/collections/five-parsecs-from-home)